Article I: On Moral Imputation

One's own action or omission, the effect of one's own action or omission, and the action or omission of another can be imputed.

I. One's own action or omission is imputed according to all notes which are intended; indeed, according to all notes which are known to be in the object, if there is question of evil, provided the will pursues the object as existing. If it is affected toward an abstract thing, the evil act is infected only by the notes by which the object is constituted as lovable or eligible.

II. Concerning the effect.

1. Notions. An effect, in moral matter, is the further efficiency or resultance of an action complete in itself, or of an omission, which can be a distinct object of the will.

The action is taken as moral. This is not complete without some intention of the will. Wherefore the end which gives the first morality belongs, not to the effect, but to the object. Cf. Noldin, Princ., n. 77.

According as the thing or cause to be examined requires it, the action is taken more or less precisely, so that what for the most part is said to pertain to the action is sometimes reckoned as an effect. Thus the killing of a man will for the most part be called an action; and yet, where it has been necessary in order to repel an unjust aggressor, it is judged by St. Thomas to be an effect per accidens of one's own defense (2, 2, q. 64, art. 6).

An effect per se is intended, or in itself also is voluntary; an effect per accidens does not terminate the will, but is merely permitted: it follows against the will, or at least without its intention, on account of the concurrence of a cause which the will cannot impede. And the effect which follows an omission is passively or negatively permitted; the effect which follows an action is actively or positively permitted. In the latter case, contrary to the former, the will by its own action positively concurs toward the effect.

Finally, in moral matter, contrary to what Kant thinks ¹, who can be called a Jansenist non-Catholic, an effect too remote and a merely possible effect, or one whose foresight is founded on no serious motive, can be neglected. Whether they are imputed or not, if they have been intended, is usually disputed in the treatise on justice.

¹ For example, a servant, at your bidding, denies that you are at home. The one who was seeking you goes away, meets someone on the road, and kills him. This is imputed to you as an effect of your lie! (Metaphysik der Sitten, Ethische Elementarlehre, Von der Luge, Casuistische Fragen, end).

2. Rules of imputation.

1. An effect per se, or intended, is always imputed according to its nature, whether good or evil.

From what was said above it is evident that an evil action is purified by no good effect, so that it is never licit to act evilly on account of a good effect.

2. A good effect is not imputed unless it was foreseen and intended: good is from an integral cause.

3. An evil effect negatively permitted is imputed insofar as there exists an obligation of positively impeding it. This obligation is weighed in the various treatises of moral theology.

4. An evil effect positively permitted and foreseen is imputed insofar as the action must be abstained from lest that effect follow. And so it can happen that it is not imputed, even though the action which it follows is evil. Thus drunkenness is forbidden by the law of temperance, but not lest pollution follow. Therefore merely foreseen pollution is not imputed to him who intoxicates himself.

Moreover, distinct foresight is not required; it is enough that the agent in some way advert that from such a cause such an effect will exist, or can easily come to exist; or at least that in some way he know the obligation to advert to this. This foresight is judged to have been present if, from the nature of the thing, or with attention to one's own experience, such an effect follows for the most part.

But an evil effect foreseen is always imputed to him who can avoid it without omitting the action. For then there is no excuse for the evil effect.

3. Practical formulas. The principle of double effect. But when an action must be abstained from lest an evil effect follow, this must be estimated from the gravity of the evil effect, from the nature of the precept to which it pertains, and from the cause for acting.

1. Hence the rule customarily posited, which we think should be written in these words. An evil effect which is permitted to follow an action is not imputed if the immediate efficiency is diverse, and the permission is excused by a proportionately grave reason.

The efficiency can be the action itself, or another effect of it. It is called immediate, not from an interval of time, but from the mode in which it is produced, which is not through or by means of the evil effect. The proportionately grave reason will have to be estimated thus:

a) Let there be considered the distance by which the evil effect is separated from the causality of the action. The nearer and more necessary the effect has been, the graver excuse will be required.

b) Let there be weighed the obligation of avoiding the evil effect from the principles of justice, if another's damage is foreseen as going to follow my causality; from the principles of charity and piety toward myself, if my own harm, for example of life or members, is feared; from the principles of charity toward the neighbor, if he seems about to sin on the occasion of my action; and of fraternal correction, if his sin will be only material. Where there has been no damage of this sort from which one must beware in acting, there is no obligation except sincerely and prudently to avoid intending the evil effect under a feigned color, or directly causing it.

c) Let the obligation just mentioned be compared with the hoped-for good and with the right of pursuing it: if, these things having been weighed, the cause for acting seems reasonable, it will be licit to act, and the evil effect will not be imputed to the agent.

Concerning the obligation itself of avoiding the evil effect, it will be useful besides to have noted these things. We ought to avoid another's damage in a human way: wherefore what is too remote can be neglected; and without too great a detriment to oneself, so that, in an equal cause, the agent can prefer himself. We ought to provide for our temporal life and safety with moderate diligence and ordinary means, not with exquisite ones. A positive obligation of impeding a material sin does not press us with grave inconvenience. But the due solicitude that the neighbor not sin formally varies according as the neighbor can more easily or more difficultly not sin.

Demonstration. Moreover, the rule handed down is shown true by this brief reason: because in the proposed case, the causality of the will, taken in itself, contains the evil effect neither as intended nor as chosen, and satisfaction has been made to the positive precept of taking care that the evil effect not follow. Therefore no cause remains why that effect should be refunded into the will of the agent.

They are accustomed to render the same thing by this other formula when they say: "It is licit to posit a good or indifferent cause, of which there is a double immediate effect, one good and the other evil, if there is present a proportionately grave reason, and the end of the agent is honest."

We call that formula less happy: a) because it seems to require a simply good or indifferent cause, whereas it is enough that it receive morality from another source than from the order to which the evil effect pertains, so that at least under this respect it is good, although under another it can be evil; b) it compares only effects among themselves, whereas the good can be both the action itself and a further effect of it; c) because it requires an end strictly honest, which is too much. The killing of innocents will not be imputed to the leader who, from hatred, orders a hostile fortress to be overturned.

No action effects another's formal sin. But observe that the free action of another, or, in the case, formal sin, can never be the effect of one's own action. But one's own action, if it is scandalous, immediately brings on a temptation, to which another freely yields or resists.

Lemmas. 1. God does nothing per accidens, since all things are in His power. Nevertheless He can permit moral evil, because He is the universal provider according to the supreme reason of the relation of things to Himself; and the very permission of evil can yield to His glory, that is, that He may obtain free praise from him who "could transgress and has not transgressed" (Eccli. 31, 10).

2. Take care not to transfer the rule called "of double effect" to the diverse case of an action which can be either this or that: for example, what I see is perhaps a man, perhaps a beast. The voluntary discharge of a gun, directed at that thing, will perhaps be homicide, perhaps useful hunting. Here there is no question of a partial causality by which the evil effect is merely permitted, but by a full causality one or the other is done disjunctively. Therefore homicide is hypothetically accepted and chosen. Wherefore it is not licit to do against a probable man what can never be done against a certain man. Or more universally: "As often as you doubt whether what you will is perhaps something else, each in evil or harmful matters must be said to be willed by you." D'Annibale, I, 155.

Therefore let us very carefully distinguish what is probably licit against a certain man, and what is licit against a probable man.

When he sins who wrongly permits an effect.

When the effect is wrongly permitted, guilt is then contracted when the agent posits its cause, and afterward his guilt of itself is neither increased nor diminished, whether the effect follows or not. Thus he who indulged in play, foreseeing the omission of the precept of Mass, becomes no less guilty because perhaps there arrived a priest who celebrated later. Nevertheless, the player will be bound to hear that Mass, lest he sin twice by omission of Mass: one omission voluntary in another, or indirectly; the other in itself, or directly. It also happens that, because the effect did not follow, the sin is not damaging, or the case is not reserved. Think of the censure laid against those procuring abortion... the effect having followed. (Can. 2350 § 1.)

III. Imputation of another's action. Although the free action or omission of another can never be the effect of one's own action, nevertheless in a certain way it is imputed to us on account of cooperation, on account of the imitation of a good example or scandal, and on account of fraternal correction made or omitted.

But again, another's action, as good, will not be imputed except to him who wished to obtain it, or at least confusedly wished to favor it.

But as evil, it is enough that it have fallen under the foresight of the agent. Yet by the same reason by which we have shown that the active permission of an evil effect can be excused, or by a stronger reason, it is effected that, on account of just causes, both cooperation toward another's evil action, and scandal, and omitted fraternal correction, can be excused.

For cooperation means only a secondary work by which the principal free cause is helped, whereas in the active permission of an evil effect, the action of the one permitting is often joined to causes that are not free, so that it can in some way be called a principal cause. Thus, in the classic example of innocents who by chance are found in the place of an explosion.

The author of scandal, as such, merely offers an occasion for evil: he exercises no true efficiency in the evil.

He who omits fraternal correction merely does not impede the evil.

Yet in itself a greater evil, that is, formal sin, arises on the occasion of scandal or of omitted fraternal correction: but the sin is the neighbor's, not that of him whose action we are estimating.

But what cooperation, what account of scandal, and what omission of fraternal correction are excused remains to be examined in their proper places.